This invention pertains to dryers for articles, such as laboratory glassware, that effect drying by blowing heated air across wet articles located in a drying cabinet.
Prior dryers typically employ cabinets in which are located radiant heating elements. Air is blow across these cabinets, that is in one side and out the other, such air being heated by the heating element as it passes through the cabinet. This scheme for drying wet articles has several major deficiencies: Because the air is exposed to the heater for only a short period of time, the temperature of the drying air is never very great, and drying efficiency relatively poor; additionally, because the heated air leaves the system immediately upon traversing the cabinet, a tremendous amount of heat is rejected to the environment during each drying cycle; and because air is blown through rather than circulated in, the cabinet, there is typically poor mixing of the air within the cabinet, resulting in temperature gradients within the cabinet and less effective drying in the cabinet's cooler locations. For these reasons, a typical drying cycle requires a power supply that can deliver very high power, and expensive three phase power supplies are normally used.